Willful Blindness Eats Strategy For Breakfast

Peter Drucker famously said that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.  We find another strategy killer is willful blindness - when people block out the uncomfortable realities of their world.  When combined with Jim Collins’ findings in Good to Great around how businesses need to simultaneously confront the brutal facts of their present situation yet never give up hope that they will persevere in the end, confronting the willful blindness that we all have is needed for success in business and life.  

Examples of willful blindness include a business or investment deal that seems too good to be true yet we enter into it, or a teammate or employee who is giving off signals of deeper troubling character traits and behaviors that we brush under the rug.  Business leader’s are even more apt to fall prey to the condition with the innumerable priorities, issues, challenges and tasks they have to juggle, that they always put off confronting those seemingly little suspicions they may have about something or someone.  But when we never follow our gut, or at least probe a little deeper, we are just kicking the can down the road, and when that issue we did not confront earlier finally catches up to us, it will likely be a much bigger problem than if we had dealt with it earlier.   

We all need trusted confidants and advisors to help us with our willful blindness

We all suffer from the phenomenon of willful blindness.  That is why we need people in our lives who serve either formally or informally as a coach or mentor - people whom we can share what is going on, who will probe into the areas in our life and business to which we may be willfully blind. It's just too painful and near impossible to do it on our own.  When we have someone who will both hold a mirror up to us and be a helping hand to guide us through the situations we don’t want to confront, we will be better personally & professionally in the long run as the ‘blindfold’ of willful blindness will have been removed.

About the Author

Tom Barrett is a Leadership Team Coach based in Nashville, and is a Certified Scaling Up Coach™, Certified Pinnacle Business Guide, & former Certified EOS Implementer™. He helps his clients build scalable businesses by clarifying their vision, simplifying their strategy and achieving their goals one quarter at a time.